Tom Comes Home in The Mill on the Floss :: The Mill on the Floss George Eliot Essays

Tom Comes Home in The Mill on the FlossTOM was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering tenderheartedness besides Maggies when it was late enough for the sound of the gig wheels to be expected for if Mrs Tulliver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came - that quick weightlessness bowling of the gig wheels - and in spite of the wind which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs Tullivers curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door, and even held her hand on Maggies offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning. There he is, my sweet lad But, Lord ha mercy, hes got never a collar on its been lost on the road, Ill be bound, and spoilt the set. Mrs Tulliver stood with her arms open Maggie jumped first on one leg and then on the other speckle Tom descended from the gig and said, with masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, Hallo Yap, what, are you there? Nevertheless, he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Maggie hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-grey eyes wandered towards the croft and the lambs and the river where he promised himself that he would begin to seek the first thing to-morrow morning. He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and, at twelve or thirteen years of age, look as frequently alike as goslings - a lad with light brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eye-brows - a physiognomy in which it seems impossible to describe anything but the generic character of boyhood as different as possible from poor Maggies phiz, which Nature seemed to have moulded and coloured with the most decided intention. But that aforesaid(prenominal) Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prop hecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals or so of her most rigid inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodifiable characters, and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink and white-hot bit of masculinity with the indeterminate features.